Fallow Mire
by Tonks32
Summary: Gideon is slightly wounded after his fight with the Avvar. With no mage to heal him, Cassandra has to stitch him up. She distracts him by asking him about his family and finally asks why he was at the Conclave. Friendship progression story.


With the Avvar dead at his feet, Gideon's legs gave out. He caught himself with his sword, his shield slipping from his grasp. The blasted thing was useless anyways. Nothing but a piece managed metal thanks to the Avvar's hammer. Maker, he was so tired, in pain, and bone cold due to the ever-persistent rain. All he longed to do was lay his head down and sleep for a week. Maybe two.

"Herald… Gideon."

Upon hearing his first name, Gideon looked up through the strands of his soaking hair finding an equally as tired Cassandra kneeling in front of him. In his hazy state of mind, he couldn't help but think that even soaking wet and battled tarnished, she was beautiful as ever. Gideon shook his mind clear. "What?"

"Are you okay?" Cassandra asked again now that the Herald was paying attention.

"I think so." He pressed a hand to his side just under the edge of his mail breastplate and came away with blood. "Or not."

Looking down, Cassandra saw the pater pooling around him starting to turn red. "Well, you're still standing so that's a good sign."

"I think this would be considered kneeling."

"Smart ass."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "I've been called worse."

"I don't doubt it." She found herself smiling back.

"Where are our people?"

"Varric and Sera found them. They are bit weary and hungry, but otherwise unharmed. Come on." After making him drop his sword, Cassandra slipped his arm around her neck and helped him stand. "Let's get you under some cover while we regroup and catch our breath."

Gideon leaned heavily against her, limping his way along with her. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"Would you even tell me if you weren't?"

"Properly not."

"You're such a complicated woman, Cassandra."

"So I've been told." Cassandra lowered her fellow warrior to sit against the wall under the only intact upper tier to clock out the rain. "Rest. I'm going to see if we have any healing potions left."

Gideon began to doze in and out of the fade. People moved about him one moment and the next he was standing in a rolling valley with lute in hand. Then it would flicker back to the raining courtyard before sliding back into the sunny valley. There was somewhere there. In the distance, he could see a person lying on a blanket with their face tipped up to soak up the sun. Every time he drifted back and forth, Gideon found himself growing closer and found it a woman on the blanket. He could see lush curves and could hear her laughter. The sound set his blood aflame.

Right when he began to reach out and touch the shoulder of the mysterious woman, Gideon was propelled back to the real world.

Cassandra was kneeling next to him again and working one of the buckles of his breast plate. "Wh-what are you doing?" Gideon groggily asked.

"I need to see how bad you're hurt," Cassandra answered releasing the buckle and starting on another. "All we have are stamina potions and there is no elf root in sight. And I don't' think taking you all the way back to base camp for the right supplies is our best option. I'm sure there are still undead crawling all over the place."

Without thinking what he was doing, Gideon gripped her chin and turned her face upwards towards his. IT wasn't lost on him the way her breath hitched or her fingers fumbled. "You told me you were okay."

"A few scrapes and bruises," Cassandra argued doing her best to ignore the heat left in the wake of his thumb grazing her cheek. "Nothing I can't live with."

Her entire left cheek and eye socket was a shade of purple Gideon didn't know existed. "Are you sure nothing is broken?"

"Well, no. But there isn't a healer amongst the ones we rescued so I'll have to suffer for now. Now, I need to remove your armor to see how deep your wound is." She picked up a small vial filled with a yellow liquid. "I don't need you to pass out on me. Drink."

Gideon huffed, but took the stamina potion anyways. He drank it though he rather go back into the fade and find the identity of that mystery woman in his dream. Soon, Gideon felt rejuvenated and sharp. Also, hyper aware of how much his body throbbed.

Releasing the last buckle, Cassandra carefully removed the piece of armor and set it aside. Her gaze fell to the crimson stain on his padded tunic around the tear above his left hip. She carefully peeled it up and then his under tunic to get to flesh. "IT's deep," She muttered as she examined the four-inch laceration. "We need to stop the bleeding."

He looked down. Blood was flowing and staining his trousers and the stone he sat on. "And how do you suggest we do that without a healer?"

"We're going to have to stitch it."

"Stitch it?"

Cassandra tore at the lining of Gideon soaking wet cloak. "Yes, but pressure will have to do for now." Folding the fabric, she not so gently pressed it to the wound making the Herald curse. "Hold. I have an injury kit in my back we left out by the main stairs."

"Wait." HE caught her by the arm. "You're going to stitch me up?"

"Don't look so terrified, Gideon. I've done it a time or two." Satisfied he wasn't going to bleed to death just yet, she stood. "I'll be back."

Once she returned, they found themselves a small closet and built a fire right inside the doorway. Far enough they could feel the heat and close enough to the door so the some bellowed out instead of suffocating them. Even after he was patched up they wouldn't move out till morning. Their people were too weary to travel through the muck in the rain. Gideon was sure the morning would bring even more rain.

Gideon sat on a crate naked from the waist up while Cassandra readied the supplies to sew him up. His padded tunic and under tunic were out by the fire drying along with Cassandra's. he did his best not to notice how her still wet undershirt clung to every curve of her body. "Just how many times have you done this?" Gideon wondered watching Cassandra knot the thread through the needle.

"Enough. Spent a long time as a Seeker, Gideon. Plenty of battle wounds to be patched up." Carefully, Cassandra pulled back the now soaked piece of cloth tearing open the clot that had formed. Picking up the flask of spirit Varric was carrying, she soaked the wound along with the needle to sterilize it. "Here, drink. It won't do much but help distract you from the pain."

Taking the flask, Gideon downed what was left in one big gulp. Even after it settled in, the drink hardly gave him a buzz. He leaned against the wall trying the brace for the pain he knew was to come. "Get on with it."

"Want something to bite down on?"

"No."

"Then keep talking."

He jolted the moment the needle pierced his skin. "About what?"

"Your sisters." Cassandra picked a safe topic. One he could talk in length about though he never did have a problem talking. Being a bard, she figured it was second nature to him to always fill the silence with needless chatter. She made another pass with the needle and thread. "Growing up with four older sisters must have been interesting."

"To say the least." Thinking about them did help distract him ever so slightly from the pain. "Lots of time being forced to play dress up and being put into women clothes. Mother found it amusing while angering my father. He beat me a few times. He thought I enjoyed it and refused to have a queer son."

Cassandra heard the strain in his voice that he always had when talking about his parents making her heart ache. "What are their names?"

Gideon struggled to think past the sharp and burning pain. "Evelyn is the oldest. She is married to a man our father picked from birth. Thankfully, she fell in love. They have three sons. Next is Oletha and Rowena, twins. Both work at the town clinic." Sweat beaded off his brow, he curled his hands into a fist to keep himself from pushing Cassandra and her bloody needle away.

"Almost done," Cassandra stated almost as much for her own benefit as his. "You're missing one."

Ah…Ugh…Triss. Barely a year older than myself. When my parents realized that I was a lost cause and had no intention of giving my life to the service of the Chantry, father 'guided her' to take me place. Blast it, Cassandra!" Gideon couldn't take it anymore. "Will you hurry!"

Cassandra completed her last pass and tired the thread into several knots until she was sure it wouldn't break open. "Done."

Body going lax, Gideon's head began to grow light. "Let's not do that again anytime soon."

"Hey, hey, hey." Seeing the color draining from his face, Cassandra eased him from the crate before he fell face first into the stone floor. "Now you chose to faint?"

"Men don't faint," Gideon argue as the Seeker propped him against the wall. "We pass out."

"Regardless of what you call it, you need to lay down."

"I won't argue with that."

"Just give me a minuet."

Gideon watched her disappear only to reappear with two bedrolls before he could even wonder where she was running off to. "You're being awful nice to me, Cassandra."

Cassandra began to lay out one of the bedrolls. "It's been known to happen."

He let her help him stretch out. The bedroll offered little padding from the hardness of the stone floor, but he wasn't about to complain. Months into this endeavor to close the breach and he was still adjusting to the life of a warrior. If it was for Cassandra's constant training, the Avvar would've struck him down with his first blow. And he barely survived it as it was. "That mean you've forgiven me completely for what happened in the Storm Coast."

Laughing, Cassandra hunted up Gideon's all but dry cloak to tear off a long strip of its lining. Somehow, she found it easy to do so in his company. She still hadn't figured out why that was and what that meant. "That was weeks ago and I accepted your apology then, didn't I?"

"Sometimes I wonder if you meant it when you kick my ass during our sparring sessions." Opening his heavy eye lids, Gideon found Cassandra leaning over him. She was so close he could smell the honeysuckle under the aroma left by battle. Her taste and that scent had been haunting his dreams ever since she pulled him out of the river. "What are you doing?"

"Going to wrap this around your waist to cover the wound. Can you lift up?"

It was a struggle, but Gideon managed to sit up. In a movement he didn't quite understand, he rested his brow on her shoulder to keep himself upright as the world began to spin around him.

His action left Cassandra's heart pounding in her throat. They were never this close outside of the training ring. Without his armor, she realized how much he filled out since their first meeting. Cassandra wrapped the long pieces of cloth around his torso before tying it together. She helped him lay back down while she tried and fail to stop her gaze from sweeping over the sharp curves of his bared body.

A scar, long ago healed, near his left shoulder caught her attention. "So, how does a traveling Bard come by so many scars?"

"Would you believe me if I said by taking on a horse of greedy pirates?"

She snorted. "No."

"Well… I got most of them in a bar fight."

"Do you cause trouble everywhere you go?" She asked stretching out beside him on her own bedroll.

"It's not what you think."

"Never is."

"I was playing in a tavern in some nameless small town outside of Kirkwall. Lots of travelers passed through on their way to the city and most of them shady characters." Gideon watched the firelight dance across the ceiling. "I was there about a month a patron got a bit handsy with an elf barmaid. He started throwing slurs at her before he tried to rip her skirt off. I couldn't just stand by and ignore such a thing like everyone was doing. I was holding my own when one of his buddies shattered a bottle against my face. Then came the knife. Caught me in the shoulder before I even saw it. The next blow would've been a killing one if I hadn't deflected it with my lute."

"You save your life with a lute?"

"Yep. Broke the damn thing by basking it against the bastard's skull. Thankfully, it was hard enough to knock him out."

She turned her head to study one of the scars running along his jaw left by the bottle. "Not many would've risked their lives for an elf."

"That's why I did."

"You're a good man, Gideon."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "There you go with the compliments again. I'm beginning to think you're starting to like me, Seeker."

Rolling her eyes, she looked away before he could catch her staring and let the sound of the crackling fire fill the room for a long stretch of time. "It occurs to me that I don't even know why you were at the Conclave."

"I figured Leliana would've uncovered that little detail."

"If she did, she hasn't shared such knowledge with me."

"Redemption."

"Meaning?"

"Turns out the two men that nearly killed me were Templars and not some shady pirate I thought they were. And Trevelyan's are brought up to be devout Andrastian. My arrest brought great shame to the family name." Gideon was grateful that tiredness was winning against his anger and resentment. "Needless to say, my father was furious and sent me to the Conclave to make amends to the order. So I could join After letting me stew in jail for a few months."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not," Gideon confessed. He fought to keep his eyes open. "It was supposed to be Triss. I'm glad it was me."

And he swore as he drifted off he heard her whisper, "Me too."


End file.
